


Tomorrow

by Anonymous



Category: Doctor Strange (2016)
Genre: Affection, Coping, Exhaustion, Gen, Moving On, no wilting flowers, past injury to hands, stephen & cloak
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-13
Updated: 2016-11-13
Packaged: 2018-08-30 18:14:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8543851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Post-movie. Steven heals from his injuries, tells Wong exactly what happened in the time loop, settles in to Bleeker St, and gets a job offer he can’t refuse. Oh, and he’s got to learn to live with an overly-affectionate, semi-sentient item of clothing which just wants to make sure he's okay, and might be a bit creepy about watching him in the shower.





	

Bleeker Street was probably home, for now; Stephen let himself take in a few good gasps of air, and followed Wong through the burning circle and into the atrium of the building. It had swung back to its old self, even after Kaecilius had warped it. Maybe buildings had a sense of their own permanence? 

His chest hurt, and his hands _ached._ He ignored the pain. 

“We must install you here,” said Wong. “The Sanctum needs its master.” 

“What about London?” 

“I will worry about London.” Wong looked remarkably good for someone who’d been a dead man not that long ago. Then again, so did Stephen. “You must rest, and let the Sanctum learn you as you will learn it.” 

Stephen pinched the bridge of his nose. “Do _not_ get all mystic on me now, Wong.” 

The cloak squeezed him gently. Wong, when he looked up, had cracked a rare smile. 

“The cloak likes you,” he said. “The building has a bit of sentience in it too, I think. Let’s see if it likes you, or if it thinks you’re an unremitting asshole, like the rest of us.” He led Stephen up the stairs. “To be fair, most of the codices that mention the cloak also mention that it’s finicky, which is mystical talk for asshole, so perhaps you are made for each other.” 

Stephen was grateful. Wong didn’t usually speak this much, but the man had seemed to sense that kindness would be the tipping point, that the veritable ocean of trauma that was waiting to swallow him whole could be coaxed in by just a little kindness. The cloak brushed one collar-tip over Stephen's cheek, almost affectionately. 

“Are there rooms, for the master of the sanctum?” 

“Of course,” said Wong, gesturing to a door. It had a dial beside it. “But I do not think you would enjoy sleeping in a dead man’s bed, so let’s find…hmmm.” He grabbed Stephen’s aching hand, and pressed it to the dial. “Don’t struggle. Let it learn you.”

What it was going to learn from muscles that were spasming and fingers that were more metal than bone, Stephen didn’t know, but he let Wong hold him there. He knew that he was barely on his feet. He’d done 24-hour shifts before, even one memorable 49-hour shift after the Avengers had had a fight with whatever Avengers fought with, but he’d never been this tired. The Cloak was literally holding him up. Wong let him go, and he sagged gratefully into the Cloak’s field of power. 

“All right,” said Wong, turning the dial until the symbols lined up. Rooms flickered past the doorway: some were bright, futuristic; some golden and opulent; some homely and warm. The room that settled was large and fairly bare; an empty desk (save for a computer), bookshelves waiting to be filled, a window with a dial beside it, presumably so that one could dial their preferred weather. But the bed was huge and stacked with duvets and pillows, comforts nothing like they’d had at Kamar-Taj. He practically salivated at the thought of it. 

“Each master has their own rooms,” said Wong. “There will be sleeping garments in the closet, and I will have an acolyte return with some day clothing for you. People will come to call, as the word gets out.” 

“Can I sleep for a week first?” asked Stephen. 

Wong squeezed his upper arm. “I will do what I can to deflect them. You’ve earned a break.” 

He left without further ado, and Stephen dragged himself to the huge window, which he flickered into a warm tropical beach, the sounds of the sea and the night soothing. There were indeed soft sleeping clothes in the closet; he got some, and then explored the ensuite bathroom. 

He’d have to look at himself sometime. He’d channelled so much arcane energy into the hole in his chest that it had damn well better be healed; he was just lucky that the defibrillator had helped rather than hindered. 

“Off,” he said to the cloak. It obeyed, and then caught him, because the second it left his shoulders, his legs were too weak to hold up his bodyweight. But he needed to get clean, and he needed to explore this wound, and he needed to sleep. So he’d keep going, even if it meant leaning on the cloak for assistance. Somehow, he and the cloak got him undressed, and he examined himself in front of the full-length mirror. Some bruising, although nothing near what he should have had even before counting what happened in the time loop. His chest bore a jagged line; a keloid scar, lumpy and horrible, but closed. So he was hopefully not going to die of that anytime soon, unless the inside was still a mess. He didn’t think so. He supposed the pain was just an echo, a reminder that he’d closed it too quickly. 

Satisfied, he let the cloak help him into the shower, leaning on the wall when it left him to it. 

Stephen had always saved any excess of emotion for the shower. There was something less shameful about breaking down when no-one else could see you do it. So he wept it out, quiet and so, so tired, and washed his hair, dirt streaming from his body, dried blood, ash, whatever else, and then turned off the water and dragged himself out of the shower and into the folds of what could only be described as a very worried cloak. It had picked up a bath towel (and _how_ , he didn’t care), and it helped him with almost solicitous enthusiasm. 

“It’s fine,” he told it. “I’m all right — I’m _all right_ — I just want to get some sleep.” 

The cloak still helped him to bed. It practically tucked him in. 

“If you want to be useful, you’ll find me some oxycodone,” he told it. Instead, it flopped onto the bed, covering him, and while the pain in his — well, his everything — would usually have kept him up, his exhausted body succumbed to sleep. 

______________

 

Sometime in the night, he woke trembling, and the cloak was there, pressing itself to him. He was reminded, obscurely, of the power of blankets to a child — hide under the blanket and the bogeyman can’t get you. 

Hide under the cloak and Dormammu won’t kill you. 

He remembered, as he drifted, that the cloak had looped with him. It must have died a thousand times too. He stroked it with an aching, trembling hand, and it wrapped around his fingers like an anchor. 

_______________

 

The next day, he ached all over, but he was functional. He’d have to put some effort into getting some money for himself again — having spent his last dollar months ago — but in the meantime, he called Christine and found a takeout menu tacked onto the fridge for somewhere that the Sanctum apparently had an account with. They dropped off enough food to feed an army, and then Christine showed up with coffee and prescription drugs, and he was so pleased to see her that he embraced her without thinking. The cloak wrapped around them both for a heartbeat, then let go. 

“Stephen,” she said, when he let her step back. “It has been a weird 24 hours.” 

“That it has,” he said, taking the painkillers with his coffee. “Thanks for coming.” 

“You sure you’re not delirious? That was almost nice.” 

She didn’t mean it like that, but it was a harsh truth to tell. He was Stephen Strange. He was brilliant and dedicated, but he wasn’t nice. 

“I’m not delirious,” he said. “I’ve changed.” 

He didn’t have the words to say how much, but she turned and took his hand, his broken, shaking hand. 

“So I’m gathering,” she said. “Are you all right?” 

“Fine,” he lied, and he felt the cloak press against him, just briefly. 

Christine must have seen the movement, because she smiled. “The cloak suits you,” she said. 

“It chose me,” he said. “I think that means I suit it.” 

She squeezed their locked fingers, and they both looked at each other, just silent for a few more seconds. Christine was the one that broke the silence. 

“I’d like to examine that chest wound,” she said.

“I don’t think that—“ he began, but the cloak obediently floated off his shoulders. All right. Fine. If they were both going to gang up on him… 

He opened the front of his robes, and Christine sucked in a breath through her teeth. 

“All right, I want membership to your cult if this is what they can do,” she said. 

He laughed wryly. “I know; where were they when I shattered my hands?” 

She reached up, then, and put both hands on his cheeks. “How are you, really?” 

“I don’t know,” he said, feeling the paradoxical weight-and-lightness of the cloak returning. “It’s like my whole life is those thirty seconds when the car crashed, over and over.” 

She brought him to her level, and kissed his forehead. “You let your cult take care of you, all right? I’d stay, but I’ve got a shift starting in half an hour. And I don’t expect to see you showing up during it and running around outside your body.” 

“That was one time,” he protested. “Two. Maybe.” 

“It was enough,” she said. “I’ll set you up an appointment to get meds for your hands. I got permission to take them this once, but they won’t let me keep on doing it, not the addictive stuff.” 

“You’re a lifesaver,” he said, meaning it. She’d put her career in jeopardy for him enough times in the last few days. 

“Look after yourself, Stephen,” she said. “Astral bodies aside, I like this new you. You’ve always had a kind heart, under it all; sometimes I thought I was the only one who saw it. And now you’ve let the old mask slip, and everyone can see it. It’s good.” 

He looked down at himself, at his new robes and old hands and despite the pain and the subtle feeling like the only thing holding him together was the cloak, he nodded. 

“I’m reliably informed that the old me was an asshole.” He made a face. “Though don’t tell anyone I said that.” 

_______________

 

He checked in with Wong later in the day, and thoroughly explored the New York Sanctum for the rest of the afternoon. The place was full of relics, although none more enthusiastic at his presence than the cloak. He let it tug him from glass case to glass case, the tugging becoming most insistent when they reached a case that contained a pair of long leather gloves. 

“What?” he asked. The cloak tapped on the case. “You want a friend?” 

Truth be told, he felt like his throbbing, trembling hands might not fit into gloves. But he opened the case anyway, and pulled the gloves out. Putting his hand in one was like putting his fingers into cool water; he could have cried. 

“Good choice,” he told the cloak. “You’re a good cloak.” It rustled, seemingly pleased with itself. “That’s it. Good cloak.” 

The gloves tided him over until the evening, when he got an email from Wong requesting his presence in the morning to begin the process of rebuilding. He set an alarm, and because he was still fairly exhausted from the previous day, decided to turn in early with a few of the New York Sanctuary’s best tomes. 

“I can shower alone,” said Stephen, to the hovering cloak, once he’d gotten undressed, gloves laid aside for tomorrow. He’d left the cloak in the main bedroom, but it had trailed him into the ensuite and hung there, just on the other side of the shower glass. “Really. I can.” It didn’t move. “Come _on_.” 

It still didn’t move, so he gave in and showered. When he took the good stuff and curled up in the middle of the bed, it curled up with him, like it didn’t want to let him go. 

 

_______________

 

Stephen liked the dramatic effect that the cloak gave him as he stepped through the portal and back to Kamar-Taj. It was like having his own personal wind machine, the heavy fabric swaying and unfurling just right. He walked through the halls and across the courtyard, novices bowing to him, and friends coming to shake his hand. 

Things were already getting back to normal. He met Wong in the library, Hamir at his side. 

“Master Hamir is here to record what happened,” said Wong, once they’d got pleasantries out of the way.

“Very well,” said Stephen, sitting opposite them. “What do you want to know?” 

They talked through everything, from his arrival through to learning to open the Eye; from his misguided attempts at twisting reality to the terrible moment of realising that the Hong Kong Sanctum was falling. And then they got to the time loop. 

“You what?” asked Wong, and Stephen understood all of a sudden that no-one on the outside of the rent in reality had seen what happened behind it. Like an event horizon, he’d passed beyond and become nothing to the people on the outside. 

“Dormammu’s domain is timeless,” he said. “So I brought time to it. I remembered what you said — how easy it was to accidentally create a loop — so I made one deliberately. I set the spell to reset on the moment of my death.” 

“The moment of your death,” Wong repeated, slowly. “You anticipated dying? What if he’d broken the spell and just killed you?” 

Stephen shrugged. “That wasn’t going to happen,” he said. “Dormammu doesn’t understand time. It’s like asking a fish to read Sanskrit. It’s so far out of his domain of understanding that it’s meaningless.” 

“Did he kill you?” asked Hamir. 

“Y-yes,” said Stephen, horrified at the way his voice suddenly failed him. “He crushed me. Burned me. I learned a few tricks, I think; I — he tended to try the same thing over and over, as if failure was so unexpected that he had to try it again.” 

“And you remember them.” 

“I remember all of them,” said Stephen. He couldn’t stand it. “It had to be done. There was no other way.” He willed himself not to shake. “I’m a surgeon. I save lives. I don’t kill people, not if I can help it. And yet Mordo was right — all I did was save my own life, in the end.” He shook his head. “I can’t articulate it.” 

“Strange,” said Wong, with a quiet intensity that was almost shocking. “You died how many times?” 

“I don’t know,” said Stephen, staring at his gloved hands so that he didn’t have to look at Wong. Like this, he could almost pretend he was whole. “I offered to bargain each time. It was like a mantra, by the end. I counted until I got to two hundred. I think it ended up somewhere around three or four hundred.” 

He didn’t miss the pained silence that passed between Hamir and Wong, and he felt anger rise. How dare anyone feel sorry for him? 

“Mordo,” said Wong. “You could have told him that you’d already paid the price for making a time loop.” 

“But did I?” asked Stephen. “It’s not high enough.” 

The cloak wrapped itself around his arm, comfortingly. It was the only comfort he could stand, he realised, but even then, not too much. He was too tired, and too much niceness would be cloying. Yes, he’d died. But so had Wong, and he was still standing. 

“You died,” said Wong, as if he were reading Stephen's thoughts. “That’s the highest price there can be.” 

“My life, no matter how many times I gave it up, isn’t a worthy price for the whole world,” said Stephen, wearily. He could feel the cloak shifting, trying to pet his face with a collar-tip. He twisted away. “Please stop that.” 

The cloak stopped. “Interesting,” said Wong. 

“It’s been…clingy…since we got back,” said Stephen. He trailed his fingers over where it wrapped around his arm. “Not that I mind. I might mind if it keeps watching me in the shower.” 

“Was it with you, in the time loop?” asked Master Hamir. 

“Yes,” said Stephen, and a horrible thought occurred to him. He hadn’t even thought about his semi-sentient cloak’s feelings. It clearly _had_ feelings. “You think it—it died all those times, too? That it died over and over?” 

They all regarded the cloak, which stiffened its collar points defiantly, as if daring anyone to say it had been traumatised. Hamir shook his head, and Wong nodded. 

“The Cloak does not think it died,” said Hamir. “I think it believes that it failed.” 

“What?” 

“Artifacts which bond to their sorcerers so quickly and clearly usually do so because they have a strong sense of purpose.” Hamir seemed utterly unfazed by the cloak rustling crossly at Stephen's shoulders. “That purpose, for most, is to care for the sorcerer.” 

“Love at first sight,” said Wong, deadpan. 

“It did not succeed at that duty, every time you died,” said Hamir. 

“It succeeded at a higher duty,” said Stephen. 

“As did you, if you will let yourself believe it.” 

“If the cloak is clingy,” said Hamir, as if Wong hadn’t spoken, “let it be. The stronger the bond between artifact and sorcerer, the better.” 

The cloak seemed to take this as permission to press close again. Stephen stroked it where it lay over his arm, and then leaned forward to look at Hamir’s record of their conversation. 

“And Mordo?” he asked. “What of him?” 

“We cannot track him,” said Wong. “But I fear he will act. We’ll just have to be ready when he does.” 

“He’s strong,” said Stephen. 

“You are stronger,” said Hamir. “But not as well-trained. We will simply have to work to ensure that your training as Sorcerer Supreme is in place before he strikes.” 

Stephen didn’t even need to pause to parse his meaning. “I’m not—“ 

“We know,” said Wong. “But there’s no other choice.” 

“Either of _you_?” Stephen asked, and a little, hysterical part of him that had always craved attention was tugging at him, telling him not to throw this away so lightly. 

“The Eye won’t open for just anyone,” said Wong. “Think on it.” 

When he spoke, Hamir was less gentle. “Training will begin at nine tomorrow.” 

 

_______________

 

Not long after, life was back on track. Stephen dressed in his room, which now had bookshelves stocked with books (and some of his old awards, rescued from storage), and a few choice artifacts from the galleries upstairs. Acolytes visited, most days, and Stephen went through the portal back to the Himalayas; in the transfer between places he managed to pick up some more possessions, some things to make the place homely. He also insisted on a certain amount of automation and magical enhancement; the gloves helped his hands a bit, but he’d quickly learned that his magic worked better when he wasn’t taking opiate painkillers, so he simply tried to avoid overtaxing himself instead. 

“Computer, read my schedule,” said Stephen, pulling on his gloves. The cloak flapped around his shoulders lovingly, settling itself without the need for adjustment. 

“9am, training,” said his computer. “Lunch with Christine, 1pm. You asked for a reminder that she has requested that you wear the cape, because she wants to ‘fuck with Nick’.” The computer paused, almost as if the AI had intelligence. “3pm, meeting with Thor Odinson.” 

“Looking forward to _that_ ,” said Stephen, to himself. 

They were letting him stay in New York, for now. It made sense, given the need for the Sanctum to be guarded, along with the amount of weird that had slimed its way into New York in the last few years. Hamir was even letting him digitise some of the minor codices — although technically, they couldn’t stop the Sorcerer Supreme from digitising what he liked, he was starting to appreciate the need for checks and balances. 

He was even starting to get through the night without dreaming of dying. 

“5pm you are due back at Kamar-Taj to speak with the overnight staff,” said the computer. “8pm you have no further responsibilities, but Master Wong has respectfully suggested some time spent in the Library will be of use to your progress.” 

“Agreed, add it to the calendar.” 

He slipped his sling ring into his pocket, and changed the window so that it showed bright sunshine over mountains. He had time to go down to the coffee shop on the corner and get some caffeine before training; he was fairly sure the Ancient One wouldn’t have approved of the amount of coffee he consumed, but he was the future. A few people looked askance at him as he walked past, cloak flapping majestically in a non-existent breeze. 

“Good morning Doctor Strange,” said the attendant. Her badge proclaimed her to be ‘Matilda’, but she insisted on ‘Tilly’. “The usual?” 

He nodded, paying quickly. “Thanks.” 

“I’ll bring it over to you,” she said. “I need to talk to you.” He took his usual booth, and he hoped that forming a routine was paying off. Tilly brought him his coffee and toast, and he caught her looking as he removed his gloves. His hands were still disgusting, scarred and shaking, but they could do so much more than they ever had before. 

“So?” he asked. 

“There was a guy here,” she said. “Asking for you. Well. Dressed funny like you, and asking for someone wearing a red cloak.” 

“Did you tell him?” 

“I told him everything, like you asked,” she said. 

“Good,” he said. “Take care of yourself. Use the beacon I gave you, if you need to.” 

“You think I’ll need to?” 

“No,” he said. “But it never fails to be prepared.” 

Tilly patted the token, on a chain around her neck. “You trying to convince me you’re a real magician, Doctor Strange?” 

“I’m the Sorcerer Supreme,” he said, and she laughed and laughed. 

“You’re crazy,” she said. “But I like you.” 

He let the cloak have its head as he walked home; it was so excited by the prospect of action that his feet practically left the ground. So Mordo was on the way back. Or someone else; sorcerers tended to have a consistent fashion sense. He’d set a trap and baited it with himself, and he was gleeful with what he might catch. 

Two years ago, he’d have cleared his schedule if something this interesting came along — well, he’d have cleared everything but Thor. He got the impression you didn’t fuck with Thor. A year ago he’d been rabidly searching for a cure for his shaking hands. He probably wouldn’t even have noticed if a magician had walked down the street in front of him. 

This year, he carved a hole in the air and leapt through it, landing with grace on the other side of the world: landing right into the future.


End file.
